Um, if it's a cliche to be blogging in the Tim Horton's right next to a blogging conference, it's a new one.
Today is Northern Voice, which describes itself as a "blogging and social media conference." You'd think all these hip, connected people could come up with a name that sounds less like a souvenir shop at YVR, where tourists buy maple syrup, vacuum-sealed smoked salmon, and deep-green sweatshirts emblazoned with stylized loons.
Silly me, I woke this morning, ate a bowl of Raisin Bran, grabbed a coffee by the bus stop, and was out here 70 minutes before the thing started. I'm working on workaday time, obviously. I'm going to chill out here with a breakfastwich, or whatever they call them.
Oh, there's activity around the registration table now. I'll tell you what I see.
One overweight, bespectacled guy in a blue plaid shirt punching the air, animating a story. Star Wars blogger.
A half attractive girl in a black skirt with a slit, carrying a packing tape dispenser. She has a limp, though. Maybe she's a hot blogger.
An artsy-looking guy with tight jeans, bright orange Chuck Taylors, high feathered bangs, and a scarf. Emily Carr blogger.
Three girls behind folding tables: one's shifting from foot to foot, one's looking at a piece of A4, one's talking to the sort of older man that proliferate at Canadian universities (sorry, the conference today is at UBC)—kind bearing; red Gore-Tex windbreaker; longer hair, usually white; backpack with laptop inside. A kind of dorky intellectual yachtsman.
I gotta get over there. They're giving out the lanyards.
More to come.
